(AFP) – The Department of Justice was to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned accomplice of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, on Thursday, US media reported, as President Donald Trump struggles to quell fury over his handling of the notorious case. The former British socialite is serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking minors on behalf of Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial in his own pedophile trafficking case.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — Trump’s former personal lawyer for his 2024 hush money trial — was expected to meet Maxwell in Tallahassee, Florida, according to US media. “If Ghislaine Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say,” Blanche said in a statement on Tuesday.
It marks another attempt by the Trump administration to defuse spiraling anger among the Republican president’s own supporters over what they have long seen as a cover-up of Epstein’s crimes and high-level connections. A Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday hiked up that pressure as it claimed Trump’s name was among hundreds found during a review of DOJ documents on Epstein. The White House has denied this.
The same paper claimed last week that Trump penned a sexually suggestive letter to Epstein, a former friend, for his birthday in 2003. Trump has sued for at least $10 billion over the story. Many of his core supporters want more transparency on the Epstein case, and Trump — who has long fanned conspiracy theories — had promised to deliver that on retaking the White House in January.
But he has since dismissed the controversy as a “hoax,” while the DOJ and FBI released a heavily-criticized memo this month claiming the so-called Epstein files did not contain evidence that would justify further investigation. Seeking to redirect public attention, the White House has promoted unfounded claims that former president Barack Obama led a “years-long coup” against Trump around his victorious 2016 election.
The extraordinary narrative claims that Obama had ordered intelligence assessments to be manipulated to accuse Russia of election interference to help Trump. But it runs counter to four separate criminal, counterintelligence and watchdog probes between 2019 and 2023 — each of them concluding that Russia did interfere and did, in various ways, help Trump.
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